'Til all are one

I'll admit it. My eight-year-old self shed a tear in the theater when Optimus Prime died. Despite having seen death in action movies and Japanese anime, I don't think any onscreen death had impacted me before.

I've been working on this project for a while and only needed Hot Rod to complete the shot. I suppose I could have used Masterpiece Rodimus Prime, but figured it would be worth it to wait. Mastermind Creations Azalea is standing in for Arcee, but everyone else is a Masterpiece figure. I think I may have mistakenly used Spike instead of Daniel.

The ground is a shot of my Mechanical Chain Base Panels, with a Cutout Filter Gallery applied and then a blue to grey gradient overlayed.

The table is an accessory from one of the Mechanical Chain Base sets. I applied a Saturation Layer to change its color and transformed it to increase its size.

Optimus Prime was shot standing up, but from a low angle. After doing a lot of work to him, I realized I had not closed his Matrix chamber. Oh well. Besides covering up screws and applying a dim eye glow, I used a Craquelure Filter Gallery to give him that battle damaged look. I also brushed on some smudges to his abdomen.

The Matrix, Hot Rod, Ultra Magnus, Azalea, and Daniel were all shot separately and dropped into the scene. Daniel required the most cleaning up because of sloppy paint work and seams at his joints. I used a Dry Brush Filter Gallery to further hide his imperfections, which had been further accentuate by the Canon 500D Close-up lens I had used.

Hot Rod was shot with my Canon 70D. I still haven't figured out how to get clean white backgrounds with that camera. Despite that, he was easy to cut out because of the much sharper edges afforded by the better camera. I did have to cut out his left leg and transform it because the original perspective would have interfered with Ultra Magnus.

Because of the angle of the ground to the figures, all the shadows were easily created using Drop Shadows Layer Styles. I pushed the shadows to their own layers because I needed some to change directions, like where Optimus shadow goes from the table to the ground to Hot Rod.

Now I just need someone to make a Masterpiece Kup so I can do the next shot from this scene.

Direct link - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwxl1QbH6hwVT3R5WDZkOGFZSms

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